So, this has been in the works for quite some time, and now I’m happy to finally announce a brand-spanking new header for the site. If you’re on a mobile device, you may not see it, so here it is (with apologies to desktop users for the duplication):
Particular gratitude is due to the photographer, Klaudia Bałazy, and the models, Gabriela, Julia, Ola, Kasia (who also had the idea for the image), and Magda, all of whom I’m happy to collaborate with in La Folie – Retro Cabaret Show. Thanks all – I think it’s pretty groovy!
Photo: Tomasz Wynalazek
The image (at the top of the page – or if you are an e-mail subscriber – click through to check it out) grows out of a cabaret sketch we did for a Halloween performance. The idea of the sketch was to recreate the style of a silent horror film – all women in incongruously elegant gowns (ala The Old Dark House), exploring a creepy old manor by candle light, discovering a shrouded figure, and, fingers trembling, reaching out to reveal his monstrosity (ala Phantom of the Opera), before screaming in a building terror that edges on madness (ala Metropolis) – but funny.
It was a comedy bit after all, and the idea was to both pay homage to the visual sumptuousness of the silent era and to have some fun with the over-the-top-ness of the premise. One woman shrieking in fear might be scary. Four women, one seemingly straight laced husband, and the hideously deformed creature chasing them all sequentially startling each other like classic Scooby Do shtick and then silently shrieking in alarm was hopefully pretty funny.
Photo: Tomasz Wynalazek
It was a treat to work on and I think the effect achieved with relatively simple means (LED candles and one technician with a close handheld light source) was stylish, atmospheric, and playful. It is a real pleasure – a delight, you might say – to bring to life even a small idea that really tickles your fancy. And out of it was born a visual concept for this blog that took a few months to finally execute, but with which I’m really happy: five women, in chic dresses, screaming like something out of a classic film.
So, let’s talk about that. Once I finally finished assembling the image, I couldn’t help but notice that gender had been (perhaps inadvertently, but nonetheless, prominently) foregrounded. I mean, it is such a long standing criticism of the genre that it focuses on and fetishizes images of female suffering. Whether or not that critique is totally accurate has been fairly challenged, but perhaps the very fact that I didn’t include any guys – it just wouldn’t have been the iconic look I was after – does imply the persistence of a trend and suggest that it should be discussed.
On one level, this is evident throughout the history of the genre – looking at classic horror cinema from the silent era, the 30s Universal horrors, Val Lewton in the 40s, monster movies of the 50s, up to the slasher boom of the late 70s-80s, and beyond, a woman screaming is just such a central image. For some critics, this is a sign of an inherent misogyny – the viewer is invited to sadistically and vicariously get off on looking from the POV of the masculine threat at his prey. Others perceive a different, but not necessarily less misogynistic, approach – the woman is the endangered protagonist because her gender implies a vulnerability which makes the threat that much scarier – now, vicariously identifying with the female body situates us, the viewers, more as “victims.” Still others defend the trend as pure style or aesthetics (thus opening themselves up to new criticisms of objectification) – Dario Argento once famously said, “I like women, especially beautiful ones…I would much rather watch them being murdered than an ugly girl or man.”
And others have read this totally differently. You could certainly take the degree to which the woman is in the middle of the horror narrative as positive; regardless of the reasons for it, compared to the majority of other genres, horror’s number of female protagonists (final girls, scream queens, imperiled ingénues, or what have you) is effectively quite progressive. Sure – women might be centered so that the protagonist can display “weak” traits that are unfairly coded as feminine (fear, hysteria, physical weakness). I’m pretty sure I remember Carol Clover describing how, in the figure of the “final girl,” the audience can have its cake and eat it too, identifying both with her feminized fear and with the moment when she stands up and fights back, taking on what are read as masculinized characteristics (and, of course, striking out with some penetrative sharp phallic object – Freud is all over this stuff).
But I think what this all really speaks to is how unrealistic the “strong” traits coded as masculine are. In a moment of real crisis, I expect most of us are more likely to freeze up, be incapable of acting, and hide in a corner weeping until ugly death comes for us. Exceptionally few would have the chutzpa to really rise as some hyper-masculine action star and lay waste to the threat, whatever it might be. I think these maligned traits, supposedly feminine, may actually be just the most realistic traits for any character to have. Facing true horror, honestly, who wouldn’t scream?
A striking example here is Barbara from Night of the Living Dead. The presentation of her character has oft been denounced as unfair to women. Of all of the figures in the seminal zombie classic, she is particularly useless, spending much of the film either hysterically freaking out or in a state of near catatonia. George Romero even took the criticism to heart and in the 1990 remake, which he wrote but didn’t direct, she was a total badass to make up for it. That’s fine – it’s actually a kind of good movie in its own right – but I think Barbara from the original rings so true. Here’s this young woman who sees her brother killed in front of her, gets chased by some weird madman to a house in the middle of nowhere, and comes to realize that the dead are rising and eating the flesh of the living! If there’s a more appropriate time to snap under the pressure, I can’t think of one and I think that put in her position, more people (men and women) would behave exactly as she does.
So, at the end of the day, sure – it’s impossible to deny that there are social inequities associated with the classic image of the screaming woman, but I think sometimes they are more linked with expectations that unjustly persist in society than with what the picture itself necessarily communicates. For my part, I really love the new image we’ve created here. I think it strikes a balance of terror and playfulness, with a classic cool vibe (and the gender focus is a part of that), celebrating the films themselves and reveling in the horror, while calling for some degree of reflexivity – some work of interpretation. Life is endlessly complicated and we are all probably ultimately unknowable to ourselves, so anything that suggests we take a moment for consideration is worthwhile.
Photo: Tomasz Wynalazek
In our sketch, it was finally one of the girls who enters into the house, finds the square jawed, masculine, husband type tied up in the basement, screaming for his life and saves him, before revealing that she’s actually a vampire and biting his throat. The point is that sometimes, you can be all things, having and eating your cake, enjoying the repeating image of the screaming woman and inverting that image to have one save the day, and inverting it once again to make her the monster. All of the aforementioned perspectives can be simultaneously correct – even when they contradict each other. Maybe especially when they do.
Horror has to be one of the most maligned genres. While not everyone may like Romantic Comedies or Musicals or War Movies, I think it would be rare to hear a fan of these genres asked, “Why do you watch that awful stuff?” or told, “I’m surprised you watch these movies – you’re such a nice person.” It’s obvious that, going back many decades at least, there is an assumption of Sadism – of pleasure taken in (watching) the suffering of others. While I can’t deny the presence of that tendency (of course, there are moments when many a horror fan thrills at an “awesome kill”), I think the act of viewing this material is much more complicated, often rooted, in fact, in the opposite—in a kind of Masochism.
Why watch a horror film, after all, if you don’t want to be scared, or disgusted, or disturbed, or somehow assaulted (all typically negative experiences)? I think we often watch in order to be on the receiving end of the harm (in a safe way that leaves no marks). We want the intensity of that experience, to undergo that trial.
And I’m not alone in this view. Carol J. Clover is most famous as a horror academic for coining the term “final girl” in her discussion of the Slasher subgenre, but I feel her actual focus in Men, Women, and Chainsaws is rather a question of identification on the part of the horror audience, often in terms of gender; while horror viewers (generally thought to overwhelmingly be male) are often assumed to identify with the killer, stalking and murdering young women with sharp phallic objects in an obvious sexual metaphor, she observed and theorized about those same male viewers rather identifying with (or fluidly shifting identification between the killer and the) “final girl,” both masochistically sharing her suffering and vicariously sharing in her violent victory.
And so if there is a kind of masochism to viewership, to what does it extend? Only to being startled or disgusted, or might it also include being criticized—morally or ethically interrogated? Do we just want to have a fun roller coaster scare ride, or do we appreciate when a film maker really sets out to give us a hard time, implying that perhaps we should question our enjoyment of this content, even perhaps directly trying to give us a bad, frustrating, unsatisfactory experience to make a point? Is that something we can value in a film, or do we just get tired of feeling scolded? Of course mileage may vary, but with that question in mind, I’d like to look at three films that I feel, in some way criticize the genre, and to varying degrees the viewer: Funny Games (2007), Berberian Sound Studio (2012), and The Cabin in the Woods (2012). All will be discussed in detail, so if you want to avoid spoilers, I recommend watching them first.
Funny Games (2007)
Michael Haneke’s scene by scene English language remake of his own German language 1997 original is a direct provocation of the viewer. While it sets up a very effective, dread filled, brutal home invasion thriller, it subverts audience expectations at every turn, purposely frustrating the viewer, questioning point blank if this violence is what the viewer actually desires, and, by implication, also asking why?
A family comes to their summer house for a vacation. Once there, they are intimidated, put upon, and ultimately held hostage, tortured, and killed by a pair of polite young men, dressed for golf, one of whom periodically breaks the fourth wall, implicating the audience in their “funny games.” It is a kind of Brechtian spin on Straw Dogs, regularly breaking the flow of the narrative to address the viewer’s desires. Interestingly for a piece this uncomfortable and frequently brutal, the film refuses to show any actual violence. Everything happens when the camera is looking the other way. Most strikingly, during a scene in which a young boy is killed with a shotgun, the camera has followed the other killer into the kitchen to watch him fix himself a sandwich.
This is followed by the killers leaving the man and woman tied up and broken, with their dead son in the corner. The camera is now unflinchingly still (it doesn’t cut and barely moves for about 9 minutes) as we sit with them in their grief and pain. Furthermore, the pace of the whole film now slows down as we watch them attempt to get away and get help. The killers aren’t seen again for almost a whole hour and I feel that we are meant to want them back just so that something will happen. We should be frustrated and bored, and therefore criticized for sadistically wanting to instead see more pain.
When they do return, once again tormenting the couple, one of the young men, Paul, asks us “Do you think it’s enough? I mean, you want a real ending, right? With plausible plot development, don’t you?” For a short moment, we are given that as the wife gets ahold of the gun and shoots Peter, the other tormentor. This is the satisfying moment of vengeance we’ve been waiting for, we’ve been set up to expect, and it’s the only on screen violence in the whole film, but it is immediately stolen away as Paul picks up the TV remote and rewinds the film. The scene plays out again, but she does not get to rise and revenge. Her husband is killed and later, so is she. The young men go on to the next house.
One may wonder why I’ve chosen this version and not the original to discuss and it is because I feel this one is even more pointed at me, at an American Horror/Thriller/Violent Film viewer. As I understand it, the reason Haneke remade his own film in English was that he felt the original had been seen and appreciated by European film critics but that it had really missed its true target audience and that those people wouldn’t watch a movie with subtitles. His intention was to poke at me, or viewers like me – to criticize the fact that I/we want to see such violence, expect to see it, are unsatisfied if we don’t see it.
It is a fascinating, frustrating, savvy, and sometimes intellectually dishonest viewing experience (which is rather the point) – a provocation on American popular culture, violent visual entertainment, and even the very idea of narrative cinema itself, in its inherent manipulation. It is a film you choose to subject yourself to.
Berberian Sound Studio (2012)
Though I just wrote about Peter Strickland’s somewhat-tribute to stylish Italian Horror a week ago, I’ve been wanting to dig more deeply into it for quite a while now. On one level, it is the total opposite of a movie like Funny Games, richly enveloping the viewer in a thoroughly non-cerebral, surreal, sensual, nigh-hypnotic experience. But it does share some elements with the former film.
The most obvious of these is that once again, we do not see a single shot of violence throughout the entire run time. And really, no violence actually takes place. This is the story of a very English sound engineer, Gilderoy, who comes to Italy to work on a horror film. Nothing violent happens outside of that film – which we never see. But we do hear it, and even if we see how these sounds are being produced (largely in the mutilation of fruit and vegetables and the obsessive twiddling of dials and knobs), those sounds are quite disturbing.
Secondly, I feel that while it, to some extent, celebrates the style and creativity of Italian Horror of the 70s, I also feel that the film shares some of its protagonist’s unease with the subject matter. The story is all about his discomfort – in Italy, working with this horrific material, necessarily getting caught up imaginatively in the audio performance of mutilations and violations, feeling pulled into something he does not like, his life and his art and himself all blurring together in a nightmarish manner. In one scene, as he rips radish roots to create the sound of a witch’s hair being torn out you can see a flash of sadistic pleasure on his face as he destroys the vegetables, immediately followed by revulsion, by guilt.
And my feeling was that the film was there with him, sharing in this complex of reactions. His journey is our journey. We never see these horrors, but we do imagine them, enjoy them (the film truly deals in sensory pleasure), and find them distasteful, by virtue of experiencing them through his eyes, his ears, his hands (as they stab a cabbage or crush a melon).
And while we are given mouthpieces to defend the film under creation, they come off (I suspect intentionally) poorly. In one scene, Santini, the film’s director, who refuses the title “horror” for his work, responds to Gilderoy’s objections: “I hate what was done to these beautiful women, but it is my duty to show. The world must know the truth and see the truth. I hate it.” In the moment, he sounds so disingenuous and pretentious, just bald-faced placation of a worker to achieve the needed labor.
By the end, the film goes to some truly odd places, but among them, we are given a scene in which Gilderoy effectively tortures a voice actor, subjecting her to deafening awful sounds in order to eke out her requisite screams. Ultimately, she gives him what he wants before she storms off and he is left to reckon with his own cruelty and monstrosity. We are left to sit with his horror of himself, with our horror of our own pleasures.
The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Of these three films, this is the only one I’ve watched multiple times, but it is no less trenchant a criticism of horror fandom. Described by co-screenwriter, Joss Whedon, as “a loving hate letter to the horror genre,” it is both a joyous jubilee of horror elements, monsters, and icons, and a direct judgement of what our enjoyment of these films consists in.
Simply described, we follow a group of young people who go to the eponymous cabin in the woods for a weekend of partying as they are manipulated into embodying certain stereotypical horror characters – the slut, the jock, the stoner, the virgin, etc., so they can be killed by monsters of their inadvertent choosing, all as a part of a ritual, orchestrated by a well-organized and well-heeled team in a subterranean control room in order to placate ancient evil gods, thus stopping them from awakening and destroying humanity.
Time and time again, we see how these young people are not the stereotypes they are set up to be, but how they are being made into them. One otherwise perfectly intelligent young woman who has recently dyed her hair is drugged by that hair dye, such that she becomes the ditzy blonde who takes her top off and dies first. The sensible young man, studying sociology on a full academic scholarship is similarly drugged to become more aggressive, to be an ‘alpha-male asshole.’
Time after time, we see how they would make sensible decisions but that they are manipulated to instead carry out the tropes of a (certain kind of) horror film. After stabbing an undead threat, an electrical charge is emitted from a knife, causing a girl to drop it (why else would she?); just when everyone should stay together and explore the house, gas is released so that they instead split up. At every turn, things are made to play out in the most rote, expected, sometimes stupid ways.
This is perhaps most explicit in the sex scene that precedes the first murder of the film. A boy and a girl have gone outside to fool around, but she’s cold and it’s too dark. We cut to the control room, where a group of men are all watching eagerly, waiting for her to undress. They increase the temperature, turn up the moonlight, and release pheromones into the air around the young couple. Moments later, she straddles her partner, takes off her shirt and is soon after stabbed through the hand before being caught by a bear trap and finally beheaded.
It is here that we have a key moment of dialogue. A security officer, new to the job and uncomfortable with the sleazy eagerness of the men around him, questions if it is really important that they all see her naked. The two men running the show respond, “We’re not the only ones watching, Truman.” “Gotta keep the customer satisfied. You know what’s at stake here?” This was the moment, when I saw this in the cinema, when I really fell for this film. Later we learn that it’s all about Lovecraftian Great Old Ones, but in that moment, it felt like WE, the viewers, were the real monster—we are who must be satisfied. And we will only be satisfied by gratuitous sex and violence.
This is often described as a horror-comedy, satirizing the tropes of modern horror films, but I really think it goes farther in criticizing us for wanting these tropes, for wanting to see these things. It directly calls out the sadism of the viewing experience. Late in the film, Dana, the assigned final girl realizes that “They don’t just want to see us killed. They want to see us punished” for being young, for being sexual, for having fun. In this, we have a direct criticism of the much discussed Reagan-era slasher formula of Sex = Death. And we are criticized for wanting to see it, for wanting to see it play out in a certain specific way and in a certain specific order. It is a key plot point that the “virgin” has to be the last one standing – that everyone else must die before her and while she may live, first she must suffer. And it is our fault, because it is what we want to see.
There have been plenty of other satirically knowing horror films that have a laugh at the expense of the common tropes: Behind the Mask, Scream, Jason X, the list could go on and on. But I think this one really calls us, the viewers, to task, all while also delivering a flick that is really (unlike Haneke’s) terrifically fun, and celebratory of the many elements of horror that we, the viewers, so love (what fan hasn’t paused to see all of the monsters listed on the big board when they are betting, or also paused during the gleeful ‘system purge’ scene to identify the inspiration for all the monsters on parade?). We are generally given what we want, but we’re also scolded for it.
How We See this Criticism
So here is the tricky part: if these movies all attack us the viewer as I’ve described, how do we feel about it? How do we take this in? How do we respond? Without some large questionnaire, it is impossible for me to really speak for the whole of horror fandom, but I have done a cursory survey of viewer reviews online (google and rotten tomatoes) of these three and it is noteworthy for me that I rarely see this criticism concretely addressed.
When Funny Games is liked, it is often for being a successful, scary, brutal thriller, and sometimes for its media criticism. When it is disliked, it is often because the pace slows down in the second half and it’s boring, or the characters are unlikeable, or that it doesn’t have a happier ending.
When Berberian Sound Studio is liked, it is often because it is beautiful, atmospheric, imaginative, disturbing, and/or unsettling. When it is disliked, it is because it is boring, weird, too artsy, or pretentious.
When The Cabin in the Woods is liked, it is because it is successful as a comedy-satire, because someone appreciates the inclusion of ‘Great Old Ones,’ or because someone enjoys the fan favorite elements of spot-the-horror-reference. When it is disliked, it is because it isn’t scary, it isn’t as clever as it thinks it is, or seemingly because someone didn’t really get the point at all and they are complaining about the “clichés.”
Ok, a quantitative literature review, this is not. But these are the general trends I’ve seen and I find it interesting that I never really see backlash (or appreciation, for that matter) to the sense of being judged as a viewer (maybe occasionally with Haneke, but I feel I’ve seen that mostly from critics rather than viewers). All three have their admirers and detractors, but I haven’t really seen signs of viewers taking it personally. Perhaps this indicates that the critique is generally accepted (negative results still constitute useful data) but I have no reason to believe that to be true. Still, I am left to wonder if I am receiving them differently than others. Am I just projecting my own sometime ambivalence? Should I investigate my own response further?
Speaking Only for Myself
I suppose at the end of the day, I do take the critique; sometimes it’s earned, and I feel generally ok about that. I think that human beings are vastly complex beasts and we all have dark little imps to feed. Sometimes, we do enjoy the suffering of others (and there is nothing wrong about indulging this in a way that doesn’t actually harm anyone – horror fiction is one method, but I also know a guy who likes to read about mountain climbers because their ordeals make him feel better about his life), and sometimes we want to get a bit (or more) battered ourselves. If at the end of a film, I feel exhausted, wrung out, like I’ve got nothing left, I’m probably pretty satisfied, even if the experience was unpleasant.
As a fan of horror, I take in a lot of this content and I know I occasionally get inured to it. For my part, I don’t feel it de-sensitizes me to real life suffering, but when you partake in a lot of a certain kind of fiction, it’s easy to do so from a remove, like a worker in a control room, just monitoring knobs, waiting for something out of the ordinary to happen, but otherwise, even a bit bored. And I don’t feel it’s beyond the pale for someone, the artist making the work that I’m watching, to call me out and inquire if that is actually as it should be—if I feel good about that, and sometimes I do not.
I want to see beautiful things and perceive that beauty. Similarly, when I view the horrific, I want to be horrified. Sometimes it’s good to be reminded of that, to try to approach work with fresh eyes, to be open to the experience – to be open to critique and take what’s coming to you.
There are some questions that continually resurface as you discuss a genre, and when it comes to Horror, defining the basic term is one such question. It can be surprising, interesting, and even infuriating to what degree this fundamental notion can prompt such endless disagreement among its devotees, creators, and proponents. I doubt baseball fans ever argue online about what baseball is.
And, yet, here we are…
Blood spatter image created by jannoon028 – www.freepik.com
Some Definitions or Descriptions
According to literary historian J. A. Cuddon, the horror story is “a piece of fiction in prose of variable length… which shocks, or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing.”
Stephen King wrote “I’ll try to terrify you first, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll horrify you, and if I can’t make it there, I’ll try to gross you out. I’m not proud.”
H.P. Lovecraft famously wrote, “the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
Ok, so what is it? What are we even talking about here? My basic definition is this:
‘Beyond fear or disgust, horror is an encounter with something so wrong, so alien to one’s sense of what is right and good in the world that it poses an overwhelming and immediate threat to one’s sense of self/reality/morality.’
Within this sentence are many key concepts. Though I claim horror to be beyond fear or disgust, I think it safe to say that within an experience of horror, one often encounters both. A horror is usually not only threatening to one’s safety, but is also revolting or offensive on a physical or moral level. Your ‘skin might crawl’, or you might ‘have the creeps.’ In fact the Latin root of horror, “horrere,” literally means “to shudder.”
I think both elements are of significance. If something is merely scary, it may be a thriller, if it is merely disgusting, it may gross us out but not horrify. Horror consists of an encounter with a wrongness that threatens. This combination can be profound. Terror resulting from the knowledge of threat is a very animal experience. Revulsion is very much an experience of the body. Horror combines these reactions of the mind and the gut in an overwhelming fashion.
Wrongness
This wrongness may take a variety of forms. In “The Philosophy of Horror,” Noel Carroll makes the argument that a monster in horror fiction is always interstitial; combining, blurring, or confounding categories, and in so doing, disrupting understood cultural schema. This means that the monster is always a play of categories thought impossible. A werewolf combines human and animal. A zombie blurs life and death. Frankenstein’s monster is built from many different bodies. Lovecraft’s amalgamations of octopodi, crustaceans, and humanoid forms certainly fit the bill, and Clive Barker’s wet and sticky imaginings confound the basic boundary of the skin, blurring inside and outside, self and other.
For Carroll, the impossibility of the creature is of great significance in defining the genre. ‘Beast’ in Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ may be physically similar to a werewolf (though in the original story, he was more of an elephant-fish hybrid), but he exists in a fairy tale world of which he is a key element. He may be feared, but his very existence does not horrify. Carroll sets his definitions more tightly than I find entirely useful, binding the genre to this specific type of monster to the exclusion of a horrific event or a human monster such as Norman Bates. Still these ideas, if overly restrictive, still provide useful insight into strong undercurrents of horrific works.
And those works are so varied. For all that horror is a known and accepted genre, it is tremendously difficult to pin down. Clive Barker has noted astutely that horror ‘describes a response rather than a subject.’ Is the genre that which shows us the experience of horror, or that which horrifies us, and could either of these serve exclusively? If something horrifies (such as footage from concentration camps) does that fit it within the ‘horror genre?’ If a work contains people reacting with horror to an interstitial creature (as in ‘the elephant man’) does that place it in the genre? I think any definition is open to successful counterexample so this I will not attempt.
Crossing Boundaries
It is relatively safe to say that the elements of the definition listed above resurface as common themes within the genre. Most significant for me thematically is the consistent act of pushing and breaking boundaries. When a knife cuts flesh, the boundary of skin is broken. A ghost represents a breaching of the line between life and death. When Regan in “The Exorcist” masturbates with a crucifix (or more accurately, stabs herself in the crotch with a crucifix – there is no sense of pleasure, sexual or otherwise, in the scene), any number of boundaries pertaining to children, sex, the body and religion are broken. When Jack Torrence falls under the influence of the Overlook in King’s ‘The Shining’ such that he attempts to kill his wife and son, boundaries of the self are breached—both in the influence that the hotel holds over his mind and in the violations of essential ideas of family (at least in the book version—the film has a different focus).
This boundary play contains both the elements of fear and disgust. Fear involves the boundary of perceived safety being threatened while disgust obviously involves the presence of something beyond the bounds of the acceptable. Rot and gore are obvious examples, but I believe this tent also covers issues of morality, psychology, and taste. This container of breached boundaries also holds many other prominent themes within the genre such as sex, violence, power, moral absolutism, and identity: a list which is by no means comprehensive.
The Film Genre of Horror
So what does this mean for the genre? When an argument arises about defining Horror, it is generally because a non-horror fan has said something like “Well, of course I like ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ but it’s not really a horror movie, is it?” or a horror fan has said something like, “I don’t get why everyone loves ‘The VVitch so much. It’s not scary – I don’t think it’s even a horror movie.”
Well, now we can just apply a simple formula to check if something is or isn’t.
Just kidding. That would be stupid.
While I believe there is value in pondering the delimitations of an experience, and yes, a genre like Horror, I don’t know that there is much point is getting so worked up over whether or not a given work qualifies. Some things are just too subjective, especially when the definitions themselves depend on subjective experience, such as what personally makes us shudder. And I think those definitions must remain subjective as otherwise counterexamples render definition itself impossible. For example, if Horror must have a supernatural monster, then sure, ‘Silence of the Lambs’ doesn’t qualify. Neither does ‘Psycho’ or ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.’ A lot of babies in that bathwater…
Ultimately, and circularly, Horror is that which is perceived as Horror to the viewer, or to the maker, in question. I personally love ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ but don’t perceive it as a horror movie. I get how others could. It has horrific elements and if you compare it’s production design or score to that of Michael Mann’s ‘Manhunter’ (the first film to feature a detective coming to Hannibal Lecter for help with a case), Mann’s film feels much more like a cool, stylish thriller, and the stone walls of Demme’s film suggest more of the gothic. But at the end of the day, for me, it just doesn’t feel like horror. I get that horror fans want to lay claim to this award winning film, but I can’t make the leap. Others can. That’s fine.
So what is the point of all this? If we can’t claim an objective definition that works in all cases, why devote time and energy to making the attempt? I suppose, for me, there is value in the meditation. There is value in the mental work of trying, even if it is all in vain. The effort of the consideration justifies itself, though in doing so, we doom ourselves to the soul rending realization of the futility of our endeavors.
I wasn’t a horror kid. I liked a bit of spooky and I enjoyed monsters, but it took me a while to really grow into the genre. I remember specific TV commercials for horror movies really freaking me out. One of the Hellraiser films, a Phantasm, Poltergeist III, a Nightmare on Elm Street, and very specifically, Child’s Play. The trailer for Child’s Play really got to me to such an extent that I took my beloved talking Alf doll (Hey, no problem!), tied him up, put him in a sack, tied the sack with ropes, put it in another sack, taped it up, and then put it in a box with books on top of it. I mean, I didn’t really think it would come to life and kill me, but why take chances, right?
These days, it takes so much more to get me to falsely imprison a childhood toy. I’ve grown to love horror and I’ve seen a lot, and as a result, it’s harder and harder to actually get scared. There are probably only a handful of films since I became a fan that have really rattled me, giving me that delicious tremble, leaving me in a new state. But I keep looking.
Elric Kane, the co-host of the Colors of the Darkpodcast, of which I’m a regular listener, often terms this ‘chasing the dragon,’ drug lingo referencing the “elusive pursuit of a high equal to the user’s first in the use of a drug, which after acclimation is no longer achievable.”
And maybe it isn’t achievable. Maybe I’ve built up a tolerance. Maybe I’ll never again feel the way I did after the first time I watched Black Christmas (1974) when I felt compelled to lock the doors to my apartment, turn on all the lights, and check that there were no surprises hiding in any closets or under any beds (mind you, I was in my 20s when I saw it – what some might generously term an ‘adult’).
So does that mean that I’m doomed to be disappointed by everything I see from here on out? I don’t think so. I think there are different ways to appreciate a horror film, different ways to love one. Herein, I plan to present a few with some examples.
The Elusive Deep Scare
This is the above mentioned classic scary movie experience. A film takes you in completely and keeps you in a heightened state for the duration, such that when complete, it stays with you, and for some time at least, you inhabit the ‘real world’ differently. And really, this is what I always want from Art. I want the art experience to change me, even if temporarily, to leave me in a different place, looking with different eyes, at least for some time.
Most examples that come to mind are classics from early in my Horror fandom. After watching Candyman for the first time, I really needed to pee, but that sure wasn’t going to happen any time soon. I wasn’t willing to go near the bathroom until at least an hour later (after watching an episode of 24).
There was one episode of Twin Peaks. No idea which episode it was, but I remember I had been watching it on dvd on my laptop while lying in bed getting drowsy, and there was this sequence when Bob climbed over a sofa and started approaching the camera and, especially in my half-awake state, it really felt like he was coming directly at me. This was helped by the persistent quality of unreality, of the uncanny that pervaded Lynch’s series.
I think a feature of a good ‘deep scare’ is that it is somehow enriched. It is not only about getting startled, but that first you are unsettled for an extended period and that there is something else to the horror – not only some scary moments. There is some horrific idea beneath it all (that even if you realize it’s only a dream, you still aren’t safe, that some toy you love, something innocent and soft, could have it in for you, that the home space could be so permeable, so vulnerable, and that therefore, there is no safety anywhere). There is some substance to the film in addition to the scariness that lets it get its claws into you. And, of course, it is scary. Of course, this is the hardest experience to come by the longer I watch these movies.
The Enveloping Horror
Whereas Deep Scares are few and far between, this next experience is far more available. These days, if I see a horror movie and love it, this is what it’s probably delivering. Some films can just take you in, holding you completely in their space, such that when they’re over, you take some of that space with you. This is mainly distinguished from the category above by the fact that you don’t exactly get scared, but the horror on offer still satisfies in a deep way.
Ironically, the emotion I often take away from this is delight. I remember watching the 2018 Suspiria remake and just loving the feeling of the world, of the mystery, of the threat and ultimate rise to power, and that whole bloody, musical, ritualistic, stylized end sequence, the smile on my face spread from ear to ear. I danced home that night, just feeling magic in the night. And the feeling persists.
Watching Cabin in the Woods the first time was also joyful. I can’t claim it was scary, but the reflexive approach it took regarding horror fandom and specifically, what a fan wants to see, the play with genre tropes, and especially, the decision taken by the protagonist at the end all satisfied so deeply (it’s really not the direction most films would have taken) and left me elated.
Both of Robert Eggers’s films, The VVitch and The Lighthouse delivered the same high. And both left me smiling rather than fearful (really, who wouldn’t want to live deliciously?). And yet, I feel both of these, and all of the above listed films, are certainly horror. A key element of this rapture consists in the pinch of the horrific, in this case quite similar to the dramatically satisfying pinch of tragedy. The awfulness of the thing, in juxtaposition with its own beauty (a parallel perhaps to Hegel’s definition of tragedy as the occurrence of mutually exclusive goods), is an essential ingredient of this envelopment.
While Deep Scares represent the dragon, ever chased, rarely caught, these Enveloping Horrors actually make up most of my favorite horror films. For one thing, they exist—you can find them. Also, appreciation for them tends to deepen on re-watch. This isn’t always the case with the first category, which having been seen once, will never be quite so scary again. The best case scenario is that, sapped of its ability to frighten due to familiarity, the Deep Scare can carry on as an Enveloping Horror. Candyman won’t keep me out of the bathroom any more, but it is still a pleasure dwelling in its space.
Good Movies with Horror
So this final group makes up most of the horror movies worth watching. Maybe the scare isn’t so deep. Perhaps the experience doesn’t exactly envelope. But it’s a good movie. The characters are enjoyable, or the plot is engaging, or the writing compels. Maybe there are really impressive practical effects and you can see the passionate creativity that went into its production. Often, they are just fun. A good movie, but with at least some soupçon of horror.
Scream is a good example. It’s a horror movie – masked killer gutting teenagers one by one and all, but the horror is not the primary element. Character and writing, rather, are dominant. It’s funny. It’s entertaining. There is enjoyable mystery to unravel in trying to determine who the killer is. The music is good. The filmmaking is solid. It is, all around, a good movie, with a horror idea at its core.
Or for a more recent example, just the other day I finally checked out Jakob’s Wife on Shudder, and I really liked it. Basically, it is a domestic drama with comic elements about a preacher’s wife, long bored in her marriage and life, who wakes up and commits to start living more fully. Can her husband go along, and will the marriage survive, or will she have to go it alone and leave him behind to become the person she wants to be? Of course the event that wakes her up is being bitten by a vampire and living her best life means drinking human blood.
The thing is, I think that had this just been the domestic drama described, it could have been a decent flick. Barbara Crampton is great in it as the titular character – I think it’s the best thing I’ve seen her do – and Larry Fessenden’s Jakob manages to be such a bore, while not veering into caricature. I believe them as people and as a couple. Plus, it’s often very funny, without exactly being a comedy. The comic elements all grow quite naturally out of the dramatic, and sometimes horrific, context (there is a surprising amount of gore that can elicit a startled laugh in just how far it goes).
But if it had just been that relationship drama, I probably wouldn’t have watched it. Adding the vampiric element lifts it up. Everything is quite literally life and death. You know, it adds stakes…(sorry). But seriously, the supernatural horror element really allows for an extremity in the story that might not have been possible otherwise and just makes it all more fun. It’s a good movie with horror. And that horror makes it better.
Of course, there are many other ways to enjoy a horror movie. I make no claims at exhaustive taxonomy, but I think these three cover much of the field.
